Tour milestone in Montpellier as Impey takes yellow jersey

German powerhouse Andre Greipel won his first stage of this year’s Tour de France, coming home ahead of Peter Sagan (Liquigas-Cannondale) and Marcel Kittel (Argos-Shimano) after yesterday’s 176-kilometre run from Aix-en-Provence to Montpellier.

The sixth stage of this year’s race looked a rather straightforward one but strong winds buffeted the riders from all sides and saw the first major splits of the race appear, while the crashes that have marred the race showed no signs of abating either.

Mark Cavendish was the biggest casualty as he came down hard in the final hour of racing and though he remounted and got back into the peloton, that effort seemed to take from his finishing kick and he had to settle for fourth place on the stage.

In the overall standings, Simon Gerrans handed his lead over to Orica-GreenEdge teammate Daryl Impey, as the South African becomes the first African to wear the Tour’s yellow jersey in the same city where Robbie Hunter became the first African to win a stage back in 2007. Gerrans led out fellow Australian Matt Goss for the sprint, and then conceded five seconds to Impey when the bunch split in the finale. The duo are now split by Sky’s Edvald Boasson Hagen, who lies three seconds down in second.

“It’s an unbelievable experience,” Impey said after standing on the podium. “If you’d told be that I was going to be wearing this, I would have said you were lying. It is a special moment for me and for African cycling.”

Irish riders Nicolas Roche and Daniel Martin once again proved their resilience and both expended as little energy as possible yesterday in advance of two big mountain stages this weekend.

Roche (Team Saxo-Tinkoff) and Martin (Garmin-SHARP) crossed the line in the main bunch in 32nd and 42nd place respectively and are now ninth and 16th overall, Martin jumping one place overnight.

They are 14 and 22 seconds down on the race leader.

Today’s stage is another mammoth 205-kilometre trek from Montpellier to Albi and features four climbs. The hardest climbing comes in the middle third, when the riders will tackle the fearsome Col des 13 Vents and the Croix de Mounis but once past them, the route begins to drop down towards Albi, with a sprint from a reduced peloton the likely outcome.